Motoya Nakamura, The Oregonian (2003)Former Portland Timbers player Mick Hoban hands a soccer ball to three-year-old Timothy Elverud during "Soccer 101" at Adidas America. Hoban was the first player Portland selected in the NASL expansion draft in 1975 and he played three seasons for the Timbers.

Mick Hoban was the first player selected by the Portland Timbers in the 1975 North American Soccer League expansion draft. Hoban, who played for England's Aston Villa team during the 1970-71 season, was one of the first Timbers to arrive in Portland -- and he's still here.

The expansion Timbers lost to Seattle 1-0 in their first game, but they went on to finish the regular season 16-6 and advanced to the NASL championship game.

The semifinal game against St. Louis drew 33,503 fans. And the Timbers went out of their way to get to know as many of those fans as possible.

The team conducted pregame warmups outside the stadium, where fans were waiting to buy tickets. Players walked into the stands to hand out roses to female fans during introductions. They kicked soccer balls into the stands. They met and mingled with fans during a post-game party.

"That created another level of connection, which was rarely seen in professional sports. That accessibility was critical," said Hoban, a sports marketing consultant. "That level of connectivity and the fans feeling as though the players were truly part of the community, that was a big deal."

It's one of the reasons that Hoban and other Timbers stayed in Portland after the Timbers and the NASL faded away. Members of that initial incarnation of the Timbers -- who were reborn as a minor league franchise and now as a Major League Soccer team -- have had a pronounced effect on the game of soccer in the Portland area.

The Timbers success in connecting with the fans and community in the early years set the stage for cementing the sport within the city's consciousness. One of the legacies of the team's brief NASL history is helping ignite the current youth soccer craze in Portland.

"The youth soccer population in those days was about 4,000 across the state, where as today it's around 60,000 to 70,000," Hoban said. "The Timbers were one of the catalysts to get it going."

Bernie Fagan played against the Timbers as a member of the Seattle Sounders in that first game, but he became a Timber in 1980 and one of his teammates was Clive Charles. The two were instrumental in helping develop and grow the youth programs in the city.

Fagan started his coaching career at Warner Pacific College in 1982 and started conducting youth soccer camps the following year. Fagan formed the Oregon Soccer Academy soccer club in 1997.

Charles began his coaching career at Reynolds High School 1983. Acting on a tip from Fagan - he became head coach of the University of Portland men's soccer and formed the F.C. Portland soccer club in 1987. He was named coach of the Pilots' women's team in 1989 and the Pilots women won their first NCAA women's soccer championship in 2002 under Charles before he passed away after a bout with prostate cancer in 2003.

"He had amazing talents that were over and above just being a soccer player and a soccer coach," Fagan said. "I just knew all he needed was an opportunity. He knew how to grasp (talented) players and develop them."

John Bain, another stalwart of the Portland-area youth soccer scene, joined the Timbers the same year as Charles in 1978. Bain, along with striker Clyde Best, helped the Timbers reach the playoffs in 1978. The Timbers lost in the semifinals to a New York Cosmos team that featured stars Giorgio Chinaglia and Franz Beckenbauer.

The Timbers beat St. Louis 1-0 in that 1975 semifinals game before losing to Tampa Bay 2-0 in the championship game.

The team endured a couple of lean years after the run to the NASL championship game. But the city's love affair with the sport continued to grow. When then Civic Stadium hosted NASL's Soccer Bowl in 1977 between the New York Cosmos and the Sounders - the final game for Brazilian soccer legend and Cosmos player Pele - the game attracted more than 35,000 fans.

"It was almost like a perfect storm of things that came together," Hoban said of the Timbers' popularity in the late '70s. "The need for a second professional sport franchise in town, the reasonable cost of a ticket and a successful team on the field.

"All of those things came together in sort of a cocktail for Portland professional soccer that connected with the city."

By 1982, the league -which had expanded from 15 teams in 1974 to 24 teams in 1978 - saw its popularity begin to wane and teams start to fold.

"What really happened to that league was (it had) a number of years of strong popularity in a handful of markets that rapidly crashed," MLS commissioner Don Garber said.

Bain said he could sense the oncoming crash.

"The crowds were beginning to dwindle. Even the Cosmos' crowds were dwindling with all their stars," Bain said. "You kind of got the feeling that (the league) may not be around for much longer."

The Timbers folded their NASL franchise in 1982, two years before the NASL itself ceased operations in 1984. However, the legacy of the Timbers' NASL franchise and its connection with the fans set the stage for the city's youth soccer explosion and the now fanatical love affair with the MLS Timbers.

"You have a town that has loved the game for a long time with a tremendous soccer history," Garber said.

"You can imagine how well they're going to do in Major League Soccer."